On January 24, 2015, Team RPG attended the Georgia qualifier in Huntsville, Alabama. Unlike all of their other tournaments, in this one, they were joined by six other Tennessee teams, including SHARP (which finished as second place alliance captain) and RoboBears, both of which Team RPG mentored.

After a very exciting day of competing, scouting, talking to judges, and making new friends, Team RPG finished in 8th place. The team was disappointed, but hopeful, because of their extensive outreach. Their good spirits were rewarded when they won second place Control award, second place Motivate award, second place Connect award, second place Think award, and an Inspire award, which allowed them to advance to the Georgia state competition that will be held on Valentines day (if you’re looking for a romantic day to spend with your partner, a robotics tournament should be high on the list.)

But flashback to the beginning. The team arrived at the school where the qualifier was being held bright and early at 7:30 am and promptly began scouting, the remainder of check-in, and the interview process. Team RPG was happy to see several teams that they recognized from the 2013-2014 season and were sure to say hello to their old friends.

The team happened to be in both the first and last matches of the day, so they were busy all day improving and repairing their robot and preparing for their next match, always careful to keep at least one person at their table at all times in case a judge happened to come by.

The end of the day was exciting. Their anticipation grew each time they received a second place award. By the time they won the Inspire award, Nocturna was squealing, hyperventilating, and jumping up and down in her seat (this is not an exaggeration – this is actually what happened). Hugs soon after ensued.

All in all, the tournament went wonderfully and the team looks forward to competing in Atlanta!

On November 8th of 2014, Team RPG went to Antioch, Tennessee to attend a local science fair (hosted by Adventure Science Center). They demoed there with fellow Tennessee FTC team SHARP (Spring Hill Area Robotics Players).

While at the fair, Team RPG talked to many people about starting an FTC team and how to do robotics. The director of FTC in Memphis, Tennessee, Dustin Maki, was there. RPG team-member Nocturna sat with him for several hours teaching him the basics of programming in RobotC.

On the 21st of October, 2014, the coach from an FTC team at Harpeth Hall came to a team meeting to learn more about the way that FTC works, and to witness a real, live team meeting in progress. The coach brought her husband and herdaughter, who works for PTC. The team gave the coach tips on how to work on the robot and how to program. The coach also got to witness the season’s field, and the programmers and engineers talked to the coach’s daughter about CAD design and programming in general. Team RPG wishes the Harpeth Hall team the best of luck!

On September 12, 2014, several members of Team RPG went to the Mini Maker’s Faire in Nashville, Tennessee. Oin, Abornzine, Jukto, Dain, and Nocturna were there to meet the attendees of the faire and raise awareness of Team RPG, FTC, and FIRST

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The night before the day of the Mini Maker’s Faire, Dain, and some parental authorities arrived to set up the Team RPG booth and make the workload in the morning less on the rest of the team. Thank you for this!

The day started out with Abornzine, Dain, and a parent at the booth. Nocturna arrived shortly after they did, and they began to attempt to connect to Excalibur via wifi. This took multiple tries, as Excalibur was being moody and difficult (also, Coach Foo, the team’s good-luck charm and valued leader, was not present), but they were eventually able to connect Excalibur and get moving.

Once people started showing up, the team began handing out flyers and talking to anyone who would listen. While they were speaking to people, they met a person who wishes to be part of Team RPG. He has since joined the team. His profile should be under the “team” section of the website some time soon.

The team had a lot of fun at the Mini Maker’s Faire, and they are grateful to the attendees for stopping by, and to all of the other super cool exhibits!

The first official team meeting after the challenge was released! This week, the team brainstormed ideas for the initial design of the robot. So far, what we have come up with is a conveyor belt of some sort. The engineers came up with the idea to use some sort of sensor to count how many balls go into the robot so as to prevent the robot from carrying more than five balls, but this was rejected by the programmers, as this would be theoretically impossible to do because he balls vary in size.

While the engineers were designing the robot, the programmers were getting themselves organized and deciding how their code would be laid out this year. They have decided to use GitHub as a storage mechanism for their code. GitHub provides a work space that keeps track of all changes of the code that are made – this should prove useful, as the programmers are prone to messing up.

The team has decided that the programmers need to write a “Diagnostics” program, which will run the stats of the robot and alert the team if there is anything wrong.

Team RPG has made some significant progress, considering that this was their first meeting!

After months of anticipation, Team RPG was finally able to see the awaited FTC FIRST challenge! Once the video was finished, the team sat there, stunned by the complication of this season’s challenge. After they had gathered their wits and eaten some food (Pretty much all that Dain Ironfoot is good at), the team began to brainstorm about ideas for the potential robot and programming. The engineers sketched possible designs for this year’s robot on a whiteboard door (which the whole team thought was pretty cool), and the programmers talked about how they were going to overcome the great challenge this year.

The team had a great time at the kickoff party of their second season(!!) and they had fun hanging out together and watching the challenge video (which miraculously had no technical errors this year). They look forward to building and programming the robot…and to competing!!

On August 16, 2014, after determining that they really wanted to visit the same place that they picked up the notorious Nocturna, who just won’t leave, the team went to the Wilson County Fair in Tennessee (the 34th most attended fair in America). Coach Foo forgot his laptop cord, so Excalibur lay undriven for quite some time, until Abornzine arrived with his laptop charger. Until then, however, the team amazed visitors with a small, simple robot that was programmed to turn away from objects in its path. Children, especially, were incredulous!

The team drove Excalibur around the building, picking up blocks, crashing into things, and causing general mayhem.

The four team members present (Nocturna, Abornzine, Dain, and a new member) had a great time at the fair, and, continuing their tradition of gathering new members at the fair, brought a new crusader into their midst. They look forward to having him on the team!

On July 3, 2014, a few of the members of Team RPG went back to the Adventure science center(ASC) to present the robot to a group of high school students from Kentucky. the members Dain Ironfoot, Oin, Jukto, Et’ath, and Albornzine Cahill did a short but thorough description of our robot, how it works, things our team did and how we did them, and encouraged them to start a team of their own. After the discussion, we demoed the robot, and even let some of the students drive the robot. It was a great time demoing the robot although we did not come prepared because we had no idea what the students had already done so we winged it and tried our best. Hopefully, we will see another team pop up in Kentucky because we demoed at the ASC

On June 12nd of 2014, the Albornzine Cahill, Dain Ironfoot, Oin, Jukto, Haldir, Et’ath, and a newly joined member went to the Adventure Science Center (ASC) in Nashville Tennessee. To demonstrate Excalibur, the robot, to kids doing a summer science camp at the ASC, we started with a presentation that our coach made. Then Et’ath and Oin drove the robot around displaying to the kids its awesome hanging mechanism and its marvelous block dropper. Fortunately, we did not decapitate any shins with the shin decapitator. While they were displaying the major robot, Alborzine went to another table to display a smaller robot that we built. Its purpose will be to let the programmers have an initial test for our programs that we code, and gives us a chance to play with new sensors we get, for instance, our new gyro sensor. Overall, we had a great time. The kids enjoyed us being there and seeing the wonders of robotics.